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New submitter kc67 sends this report from ABC:
"Five years after the iPhone originally launched in 2007, T-Mobile will finally start carrying it. It might not be as buzz-worthy as when Verizon finally got the iPhone back in 2011, but it's going to be a pretty big deal for T-Mobile subscribers next year, when the carrier starts selling Apple products. ... T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere said while speaking at the Deutsche Telekom conference Thursday that it will carry the iPhone and will offer it in a different way. 'What was missing? A certain number of customers wouldn't come to the store if we didn't have the iPhone,' Legere said. 'We worked very, very hard for a deal that made sense for us.'"

....Fortunately for them some people don't care, some people are too cheap, and some people like me prefer GSM because its an international standard

The iPhone 5 has GSM no matter which company you go with. Only the Verizon and Sprint versions have CDMA. And for LTE, the two different varieties use different bands. Which variety you will want (if you want LTE internationally) for international travel depends on which country you're visiting. For GSM, it doesn't matter.

Yes, but you brought you own device and continue to use it. You're not one of those high-maintenance customers who needs to upgrade their iPhone every time a new ones comes out, or throws a huge fit if you get a scratch on the casing and wants the whole phone replaced, etc. So you're not the same sort of customer the AC is referring to. Customers who raise operating costs for carriers and make them raise prices for everyone.

That's what we go to our churches for, i.e. Apple Stores. Those customers who go to a T-Mobile store for device support probably don't know whether they have iOS or Android running on their phones and thus are totally unworthy of the i-sheep(TM) badge.;)

As I said, it's $30 with autopay. Virgin Mobile saves you $5/month on various (maybe all) plans if you set up credit card autopay. I was doing that when I had a prepaid mobile phone, and was down to $5/month overall cost (it charged $15 every 3 months).

They are moving to a non-subsidized model, which is hot. As it stands you get your iPhone for $200 then end up paying $1400 extra in some cases for an overpriced 2 year contract. I bought my own phone and did this already on T-Mobile, I only pay $30 a month for "unlimited" data (up top 5 gigs at "4g") and 100 minutes of talk time, which is all I need.

Sprint especially made the mistake of just committing to a huge number of iPhones at a staggering price they must now subsidize. Will be interesting to see if people are still willing to pay the True Price for an iPhone (e.g. $600) versus maybe $450 for a high end Android phone.

Still, monthly increments imply that the user will still be aware of the cost of the phone. Unlike the bulk of US operators where different phones are subsidized at different rates, with the user left with the impression that all phones cost either $0, $99, or $199. In this case, I expect the user will see:

Right. Plus, the customer can even put more down up front and pay less over the course of the 20 months. The customer can also pay off the installment plan early, too, which would also reduce their monthly bill. The other carriers won't let you do that.

Plus, once the plan is paid off, your monthly rate goes down. The other carriers don't do that; if you don't jump on the upgrade opportunity as fast as possible, you end up wasting even more continuing to pay as though you still owe money for the phone.

I've been a TMoUS customer for years, and have been happy with them. This makes me more happy. Thank $DIETY AT&T's grubby paws were kept away. My only real concern out of this is that they might end up facing worse network congestion. Right now, it's incr

When I bought my first Android phone at T-Mobile some years back (MyTouch 3g) I walked in totally ready to buy the phone outright and get on a no contract plan. When I told the sales person that was what I wanted to do, he said "cool" and then went on to say that if I wanted to, I could get the same no contract plan, and finance the phone at 0% interest for 18 or 20 months -- can't recall exactly but something less than 2 years. Obviously that is a better deal even then just buying the phone outright so t

And I just signed a 2-year contract for 1G data, some minutes (can't remember) and lots of texts for £6/month. US$10?

Admittedly, it's an awkward deal -- it's really £12/month, with 50% rebated by sending in copies of my bill (about 6 times over the two years), so it takes some time on my part. But I've done it twice before now, and it works.

Up to 5GB at max speed. They'll throttle you back to about 300kbps (still fast enough for music streaming, which is where most of my phone data usage goes) until the end of the month if you go over 5GB on that plan, or so I've heard; my friends who have it say that's never happened to them. I'll probably switch to that plan shortly myself.

Uh, how isn't it comparable? The Galaxy S3 does have an external SD and a slightly larger screen. The iPhone has neither. The Nexus 4 has more up-to-date software. If you're on Verizon or Sprint then the fact that the Nexus 4 is not available in CDMA is an issue.

Some complain about the lack of LTE, but at least in the US ATT's LTE service isn't nearly as fast as what the Nexus 4 can deliver by HSPA+. If ATT gets their act together they could in theory do better as LTE is somewhat faster than HSPA+, but

All Android phones can do that, and they're treated as normal file systems, as they should be. The problem is that the Nexus 4 does not have a removable SD card. Even though it doesn't advertise it, apparently it does have LTE though. Type in a sequence of characters on the phone and it turns it on. I'm really hoping the next batch still uses the same underlying hardware.

T-Mobile has the iPhone since ages in other countries. For instance here in Germany you could get any iPhone from T-Mobile IIRC. Don't know why that was different in the US. Probably because Apple tried to pay them through the nose. But the smartphone market in Germany is very different: very fey iPhones, many many Androids.

T-Mobile doesn't have iPhone in the US because we have a highly fragmented spectrum for cell phones. T-Mobile uses GSM, which is compatible, but in the US it's on an entirely different set of frequencies that the iPhone doesn't support.

Kinda. AT&T has had the iPhone for ages so if that were the only problem...

The issue is the 3G version of GSM, UMTS, which T-Mobile, until now, has run on the AWS spectrum. (AT&T was running it on 800MHz Cellular and 1900Mhz PCS) iPhones don't support AWS.

T-Mobile is doing "spectrum refarming", adding 3G to its PCS frequencies. The interesting part of this is that this means an influx of iPhones shouldn't significantly affect users of better smartphones, as we'll still be able to use the AWS 3G (and in some cases, both AWS and PCS.)

I was wondering why my iPhone started getting 3G signal. I have a factory unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile w/ unlimited everything for $45 a month (about $47 after taxes). I thought I was going to get HSPA+ with it, but that never seems to work. In any event, I am saving so much money over my previous plan that the phone has basically paid for itself in 1 year. I am hoping to hold onto it for 5 years if possible.

T-Mobile doesn't have iPhone in the US because we have a highly fragmented spectrum for cell phones. T-Mobile uses GSM, which is compatible, but in the US it's on an entirely different set of frequencies that the iPhone doesn't support.

That's not correct. T-Mobile uses the 1900 band in the USA and all the iPhones support that fine. It's trivial to find accounts of people with unlocked iPhones who currently use them on T-Mobile in the USA. T-Mobile doesn't have the iPhone in the USA because they were basically unwilling and perhaps unable to pay Apple's exorbitant prices to get permissions to sell it.

Then how is it that the top-left corner of my iPhone 4s says, “T-Mobile”?

I've had it for over a year. Bought an unlocked phone at an Apple store, stopped at the local T-Mobile store on my way home, oohed and aahed about it with the cute girl while she rummaged in the drawer for a micro-SIM, and made my first call on it in the parking lot before finishing the drive home.

It's with a fantastic pre-paid plan, too. I pay $2 / day on any day that I make even one phone call or transmit even one byte of

iPhones on T-Mobile support 4G just fine, but they don't support 3G. On T-Mobile there aren't that many areas that have 3G but not 4G, so that isn't that big of a deal.

Anybody who wants an iPhone on T-Mobile just needs to get an unsubsidized plan and then go buy one from the Apple store. The resulting TCO will be WAY lower than getting it on ATT. You'll pay an extra $450 up-front for the phone, but you'll save a small fortune every month. The $30 data-only plan is an obvious way to save. On a family pl

A close friend, who uses Tmobile in the SF Bay Area for the Nokia N900, got an iPhone 4S half a year ago. Both phones were bought at the non-subsidized expensive price, unlocked. Where the N900 had been getting 3G signals, in the same location the iPhone 4S would get EDGE only. Siri would be useless. Apparently the iPhone 3G was not on the same frequency as the N900 3G.

That changed about a month ago, where suddenly during the long daily commute up the peninsula (between Silicon Valley and San Francisco)

What's mentioned in TFA, but not TFS is the news they include that they will be moving away from subsidies. This I think is an awesome improvement! Think about it, "I can pay $30 less per month, put that into a savings account and every 2 years get a good phone... or I can get a good phone now and pay an extra $50 per month for a worse plan and if I mess up it ruins my credit" They mention changing subsidies to a "payment plan" type of thing, which is really what it should be considered. I completely welcome this change.

As a result, they provide their phones with minimal margins because they'll make it up in monthly fees(for the service). I bought my wife a phone with T-Mobile and I was amazed I could get a relatively decent Android phone for $200. Try finding a decent smart phone from another carrier at that price. Also, her plan is flat $50/month with no contract, and unlimited everything. Last time I looked at AT&T, the equivalent plan was $110/month and a similar low-mid-range phone was $450 without a contract

I fully support your message. I live in Tucson, Az, and recently switched from Sprint to T-mobile.

I am much, much happier with T-mobile than I was with Sprint. The big motivator for me getting a smartphone was the ability to stream Pandora while jogging and biking, but with Sprint, even in wide open outdoors situations in the heart of Tucson, I rarely was able to stream at even the lowest quality settings. Tethering my desktop while inside the house was out of the question. Speedtest.net results typically

Yup, I switched to their unsubsidized plan a few months ago. If you buy new phones it works out about the same with the monthly phone payments. However, it gives you a LOT more flexibility around phone purchases. I can buy any unlocked GSM phone I want, including an iPhone. I can buy a Nexus 4 for $350. I can keep a phone for 3 years and save more, or I can upgrade a phone every year and sell the old one each time.

Their plans are really cheap too. I'm paying $120/mo for four lines with 2x2GB data plan

As long as they want, assuming they don't take on the accounting practices of the bigger carriers. Companies like Verizon and AT&T make a ridiculous profit on their data service, yet they cry over losing even one cent. Here's my math to back it up.

I was bored one day and decided to do some digging on those data overages the cell phone carriers love to charge. $.10/MB seems like a fairly common rate, but what people don't realize is, that works out to about $33,000 per Mbps per month. The amount of

Made a typo. Ignore my extra zero. "1000 cents" and ".94 cents" respectively when comparing the normal data rate. Still ridiculous at $3300/Mbps. Would you cry over losing a slight edge on a 1000x markup?

T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere said while speaking at the Deutsche Telekom conference Thursday that it will carry the iPhone and will offer it in a different way. 'What was missing? A certain number of customers wouldn't come to the store if we didn't have the iPhone,' Legere said.

The summary doesn't even mention what's different about T-Mobiles plans! No subsidies to buy the phone up front (so you'll pay 600-850 for your iPhone, depending on the model) and this (should) result in cheaper monthly bills. I hope it works out!

True, but there are a few benefits that the other carriers don't have.
1. You can pay a higher down payment to reduce your monthly payment.
2. You can pay off your balance early to reduce your monthly payment.
3. You can upgrade at any time.

T-mobile just happens to have better coverage here.If you get an unlocked iPhone they can give you edgecoverage. I have started using an old Samsung 3Gphone for voice. Data is WiFi for now but I can tellyou that as soon as I am contract free I will be lookinghard at changing 100% from the A&someting company.

This is a freaking ad, and it's obvious now that someone at Apple is paying one of the editors (same goes for Microsoft), or they both have someone they employ who is an editor...can we please see stories that are actually news and not freaking ads, please?!?!???!?

T-Mobile is also going to end handset subsidies which translates into everyone paying MSRP for all handsets all the time. The upside of this is that it will kill most handset sales since few of them are even laughably close in value to the full retail price. b

I've got an Android tablet on T-mobile (Galaxy Tab 7 Plus). I've had it for about a year now. Before that I had the Droid Triumph, the Droid, and the G1. For all of these except the G1, I've had to find custom firmware. The pre-installed, unremovable shovelware is annoying, but the lack of updates is unacceptable. The iPhone 3GS was released 3.5 years ago and will run iOS 6, no waiting for the carrier to release the update.Even with Samsung, supposedly a good Android manufacturer, my device hasn't received

This is the problem that Nexus devices are designed to solve. You get updates directly from Google as soon as they're released; no carrier to get in the way. (Well, unless you're on a CDMA carrier, since they still withhold the signed CDMA drivers. Which is why Google has stopped releasing CDMA versions of Nexus devices).

So buy a Nexus device directly from Google Play, hook it up to an uber-cheap T-Mobile prepaid plan, and you'll be up-to-date for as long as your hardware can physically run the latest versi

That would address most of the problems I have, except for the lack of accessories.There's one other reason I want to get an iOS device. There's an app called Coaster that's made for iOS and Android. However, the app developer blocked it from Android tablet devices. I don't have a smartphone, just a tablet with data. The app will work on an iPad Mini, but even after I tried to hack my tablet to run smartphone-only software, it refused to install. I tried contacting the developer to no avail. So yes, apps ar

I have gotten 4.1 and 4.2 basically the day it was released on my Galaxy Nexus, and any updates same (4.2.1 currently). Rox. T-Mobile prepaid. Rox. Don't see why I would go with anything else, ever; half price of iPhone, half price for service, does everything I need it to.

App for everything. I'm sure there are corner cases, but I don't need paper maps, a GPS, flashlight, camera, laptop (for travelling anyway...), or a music player, in addition to a phone, anymore.

They are switching to LTE, but selling non-LTE phones. And, my understanding is they are pushing current users onto only one of their frequency bands to make room.
Maybe I'll be back when my new Verizon plan runs out in 2 years and things are settled.

I actually own both an iPhone 5 and an S3. I've had 4 iPhones, and purchased the S3 b/c I wanted a test phone for mobile development. My plan: I'll make whatever seems the better phone my primary line.

My opinion: the S3 seems to be a superior phone. However, there are some really top notch apps on iOS, and I'm finding poor substitutes so far on Google Play (both free and paid). (TweetBot, Things, Downcast, and OmniFocus come to mind) Some of the "same" apps available on both are very poor on Android. Some o

What do you like about the S3 that you feel makes it superior to iPhone?
What I've noticed about most iPhone/Android comparisons is that people will present minor features that most users will never touch as their reasons for their preferred device being "superior". It's like at the beginning of Monty Python and the Meaning of Life where the Protestant husband is describing how they are superior to Catholics because they can have sex anytime they want and not have to worry about having children because the

What I've noticed about most iPhone/Android comparisons is that people will present minor features that most users will never touch as their reasons for their preferred device being "superior".

How about platform openness? Just sayin'...

Seriously, though. The reason I went with Android rather than iPhone back in the day was because Apple made it so difficult to jailbreak their new devices. With a Nexus phone, rooting and installing a custom ROM is actively encouraged by Google. For someone who loves coding like myself, it's a no-brainer.

For 99% of the population, who gives a poop about platform openness? when it comes to my phone, all I care about is whether it runs the apps I want. While yes, I could program for my phone, I don't have time or the inclination to do so. In fact, the lack of openness probably keeps some of the riffraff out by presenting a slightly higher barrier to entry.

The fact of the matter is that from a usability perspective,a lot of open source software simply sucks. I've been running linux since 1997, and except f

It will be even longer if people keep starting with an iOS app and port it too closely for Android. The reduced number of controls on iPhones mean a few more compromises must made in navigation, and those should be removed, as Android users generally aren't used to them, and they waste screen real-estate. You really need to take the available controls into account when developing the UI, and many to a quick port without doing that. I have a couple of apps that are barely usable because of it.

I'd love to get a MacBook (and run Debian/KDE on it). Those new screens are quite nice. If Apple would allow people to install software from alternate sources and stop with the proprietary connectors and frivolous lawsuits, I might be willing to shell out the cash for one.

I think those days are mostly counted, the current MBP has USB 3, HDMI, SDXC card and Thunderbolt connectors, of which you may count the Thunderbolt one as proprietary, but all its rights belong to Intel, not Apple.
And as "Internal Modem" has mentioned, you of course can install on a Mac whatever you want. The Mac App Store is not really good anyway.

I'm not talking about Macs here... they're not the ones pushing the industry in a bad direct (yet). On the contrary, I think all laptops should have screens like that available. Unfortunately, they're made by the same company that make the iOS 'eco-system', and that part makes them most of their money. I can't in good conscience reward them for their laptops when they seem hell-bent on talking away people's rights to use their own devices as they please. I think the end of openness for th Mac is coming as

Ah I see, didn't read it that way. With the "certain features you can only use if you install software through their market" you probably mean Xcode, which is free but you still have to register, agreed.

Yeah, but for the android device, its as simple as selecting "skip" when asked to log into google, then installing an alternative app market of your choice through the web browser. Oh, you might have to enable installing apps from other sources, a simple tick in the settings.

I was so puzzled by this question that I had to go digging for an answer, and it looks like the MOP is actually an ex-metroPCS employee. Likely with a low opinion of his former employer...possibly bitter over witnessing typical sleazy telecom behavior and being forced to carry it out... Still though, given the way a telecom merger works, your question still requires an answer.

It's funny, because you're exactly backward. T-Mobile is dropping subsidized contract plans altogether. Instead, all plans will be month-to-month (even on iPhones) and when you buy a new phone, you'll have the option of paying full retail price or putting it on a payment plan that is added to your monthly bill until the loan is paid off. A much better system all around than the other big carriers, and one that I'm pleased to see T-Mobile is able to take even with the iPhone (not that I have any interest in